This cannot POSSIBLY be the best day for this but as I’ve said over and over I’m not in control. SO, here’s a thread about ART.

1/50 (no, that’s not a joke lol)
First, a definition: Art is what virtualizes experience well. I got it from a tumblr blog post I absolutely cannot find . (Art+tumblr returns many things that are… not that.) Good art captures and compresses experiencing in a form such that it is of easy digestion by others.
This rang true of my experience as I noticed apparently simple pieces being extremely ressonant in that they captured my experience so well. Like this one. https://twitter.com/chazhutton/status/1253693151409246210
Or this: https://twitter.com/aardvarsk/status/1194754112253915136
(I don’t think they’re actually simple. I think their simplicity is a decoy and that it hides the complexity of the work of having (1) noticed the feeling (2) captured it and (3) put it in a way where it in a form it transmits so easilly
I kept paying attention to this and saw people treating other art forms, maybe the most ubiquitous online (memes), as ammunition.
If you go to 4chan’s /biz board (don’t go) it’s just and endless deluge of memes, and that’s how people communicate. OC (original content) is valued because it’s so rare.
I noticed that people there would treat those memes as ammunition. 4chan copypasta in /biz/ as to why someone should or should not invest in some cryptocurrency or another.
Which fascinated me! Text (“copypasta”) was copy and paste to serve as ammunition in their low stakes on-going memetic war. Making some thoughts easier to think and others harder.
And then I noticed, it wasn’t just 4channers. This was kinda endemic. People, saved pieces of content as definitive argument for some conclusion and then would just deploy them. Like this, which I had referenced at me multiple times: https://twitter.com/AngularOcean/status/1265198801662418944
Where I understood something else good art virtualizes, shareable good art is memetic ammunition which can be easily disembursed. https://twitter.com/jackrim1/status/1273388468413116418?s=20
And just because it’s ammunition doesn’t mean it’s bad. It can be good, life-saving even! https://twitter.com/danlistensto/status/1265035539314429952
It was around this time that I understood that not only memes and blocks of text could be art but (of course) tweets could too. https://twitter.com/laura_hudson/status/1270394785598074882
(cue this quip:) https://twitter.com/GrimKindness/status/1258867593848463360?s=20
But really, they can, and it’s not even that hard. Here’s one being art just via via capitalization and tone alone. https://twitter.com/gojomo/status/800828383990935552
Notably they’re good as ammunition because how easy they are to re-use (share). Copypasta you, well, copy and paste. Image macros you save and deploy. Tweets you do a quick search for because you know what you want.
At this point I started getting confused. Why did these feel *so* different? Could even slightly different forms of presenting the same content have such an impact? It seemed so: the emojis here made all the difference https://twitter.com/reasonisfun/status/1106859299106705410
And this one was pure emojis. It parsed *extremely differently* from if it were just language.
https://twitter.com/meditationstuff/status/1159227726521413633.
I realised you could have art made out of pure language, as long as it squander your expectations.
This all got me thinking about something @SamoBurja had told me on how different social media platforms were effectively different “algorithmic universes”. I think that’s right and that that’s because they *force* you to present content in a different ways.
At which point I wanted to figure this out from a maker perspective so I started fucking with what I called “minimum viable art”; what’s the least one needs to do for something to be art (something that virtualizes experience well)? I started collecting examples of what I mean:
(Extreme apologies but I didn’t know I’d end up making a thread so I didn’t save whose these are! Please let me know and I’ll credit you appropriately!)
Anyways, here’s what I got:
Virtualizing the experience of lifetime relationships with two lines.
Virtualizing a *very* specific emotion with one dot and two lines. https://twitter.com/nosilverv/status/1258777170543104002
One emoji and text placing to create art. (from @vgr)

(Didn't even remove the incorrect spelling marker which just makes it better!)
"Just" white on black seemingly handwritten lettering to create art ( @austinkleon)

( https://twitter.com/AliAbdaal/status/1258024106345332739)
“Just” placing emojis on a line to describe pandemic feels by @nibrasibn https://twitter.com/nibrasibn/status/1271144657012097025
Basically the same image twice, but with slight changes that virtualize a feeling perfectly (by @dchem)
Take your time with this one and notice, once you get it, how little effort it was to make and how all the effort was in the (genius) idea behind it
Three lines and two dots to capture this beauty
Change a few lines to express an idea. From @Neats29 https://twitter.com/Neats29/status/1259235844893872131
This one… Just watch it
Same here
Finally this masterpice. “Just” close-ups and lettering. Lettering matters.
@mikeelias has sorta mastered this art for content delivery in twitter https://twitter.com/harmonylion1/status/1257353800001695744
But Leon Krier gets the crown: making doodles that get a point across that very easily enters and stays inside someone’s minds. https://twitter.com/simonsarris/status/1217640448501714950
And, of course, @jackbutcher who’s delivering the ability to do this, at scale. https://twitter.com/jackbutcher/status/1256265836429479938
I realised that changing means of delivery changed how the message is received. It’s just not the same tweet if it’s the same tweet but from an anime avi or knuckles avatar or real face says the exact same thing. Heck, adding a 😇 to my name changed how people parse my tweets.
Once I realized this I tried making my own with some success https://twitter.com/nosilverv/status/1258463253488943104
(i told you lettering matters) https://twitter.com/nosilverv/status/1266400420659953666
https://twitter.com/nosilverv/status/1265645497873838080?s=20
I then got back to my “””study””” of memes and they’re ability to virtualize experience well. This one gives you a referent for anxiety via the video game experience.
(This is actually incredibly phenomenologically correct)
Memes are interesting because only a limited number of things that are expressed, the form of the memes themselves change (and thus who consumes them): https://twitter.com/nosilverv/status/1249791236589969409
https://twitter.com/bubbleteaPhD/status/1257934841770901506
Why am I sharing all of this? @AvalancheJohn told me consultancy is just research + presentation. I think my entire timeline is bottlenecked on the latter. That’s my agenda. We’re overloaded with excellent ideas and bottlenecked on their delivery. The present moment is relevant.
I mean look at @waitbutwhy. You won’t get it out of my mind that a huge reason of his success is how the content is presented (key: lotsa drawings, easy to share)
Anyways, what I'm getting at is: kid’s minds are open to what can be art. I want to re-open your mind too. https://twitter.com/nosilverv/status/1206850719267147776?s=20
Why? Because I want people making BIG art. Things that deploy this at a distance over time too many people. Why? Because I think artifacts transmit intentions. Stage one of my plan was to improve the karma of my followers (/help them solve their shit). https://twitter.com/nosilverv/status/1272535466965970946?s=20
Stage 2 is help them help others solve their shit. Art is a means to show there’s a better way of being. Art is a way for their ideas to leave our small circle. It's not coincidence that HPMOR worked the way it did.
~Fin~
P.S.: If it’s about this, don’t even @ me https://twitter.com/alexhick3/status/1271117013210075142
You can follow @nosilverv.
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